Greeting Fate
by Unravelling
Summary: Goodbyes that changed the fate of the world. Series of oneshots.
1. Born of the Wind

**Born of the Wind**

He is but a boy, gentle as the breeze, staring across snow-capped peaks and glimmering seas to a future unimaginable.

_You are the Avatar, guardian of the balance._

The words, solemn and sudden, echo through the chamber as the heavy mantle–_the burden_–of the Avatar settles around the boy's shoulders.

Everything changes.

As the days pass and the word spreads, the once-tolerable gap between him–_the gifted prodigy_–and his friends grows until there is a gulf too wide and too deep to bridge.

By the turn of the month, it has all but replaced his name. To so many in the temple, he has become _the Avatar_. In their eyes he is an ideal, the personification of natural balance–_otherworldly and distantly revered._

But none of them understand. None of them see the lonely boy–_every bit as human_–haunted by dreams and nightmares of a responsibility that he isn't ready for.

None of them...save for Gyatso.

His first teacher pulls him aside as he dejectedly trudges from yet another training session. Wordlessly, the older monk guides him down a familiar path, to a familiar room and a familiar Pai Sho board.

_Familiarity._ It is a something he longs for and yet fears at the same time.

As the elder lays out the tiles in a ritual all too familiar to the boy–_not the Avatar_–fear and desperate hope roil together in a bitter mix of confused anger. So many emotions tear through him and he _chokes_ on them; fails to move or even _speak._ He can only stare across at wizened eyes, a burning question in his gaze.

"_Why_, you ask." A sly smile tugs at the aged face. In the brief silence between words, the anxious roar of blood fills his ears–_the rhythm of life and death._

"Because you have not changed whatsoever, as others may believe." Here, a touch of melancholy seeps into his words.

"You have _always_ been the Avatar, Aang. Just as you have always been yourself. Nothing has changed, save their perceptions. But don't worry." Here his lips twist into a mischievous grin.

"This old man is a little too stubborn to change. And I've known from the start."

Hope bursts to life in his heart, yanks him to his feet and throws him across the board into waiting arms.

He is but a boy who needs someone to _understand_, someone to treat him like the child he _is_ beneath the cloak of his title.

_Nothing has changed._

The words give him strength; the strength to ford through the river of _change_ that almost drowns him every day. His old master becomes a shelter from the expectations of the world; their time together, a shield of custard tarts and Pai Sho, of cheerful laughter and weightless happiness.

But nothing can last forever.

_The Avatar will be sent away..._

The solemn words are a judgement–_a sentence_–and he can see the defeated slump in his teacher's stance. The council has spoken.

His fragile world begins to shatter.

Today, Gyatso isn't there to pull him aside after training and when the moon eventually rises, his sleep is broken and restless, haunted by a familiar despairing loneliness.

Visions of the roiling elements come to him, each surging furiously against him–_fierce and consuming_. A voice, echoed by innumerable tongues, speaks.

_A storm gathers on the horizon, child of the wind_, _spirit of the world_.

_Will you walk the sheltered path laid out before you?_

_Or will you find your own way?_

He wakes to roaring rain and crashing thunder, his decision made as brilliant lightning knifes through the sky.

Aang only looks back once, to his home and his family–_his life_–as his bison spirits him away into the storm.

His goodbye is brisk–_ephemeral_.

Like the wind.


	2. Children of Change

**Children of Change**

They are still children, inexperienced in the cruelties of the world, when their mother is set adrift on that final journey.

He is a boy on the cusp of adolescence, rigid at his father's side, hidden behind a mask of false stoicism.

She is a girl, too young to comprehend, crumpling at her mother's side as grief openly twists her heart–_her soul._

Their first goodbyes are mirrored; his is silent–_unfathomable_–like the ocean depths and hers, vivid and forlorn like the moon's lonely light.

Kanna watches them, her own grief stirring deep inside, knowing that this blow will shatter them both if they do not move with it–_if they are not shown the way_.

When she speaks to them it is by an open fire, away from the sudden emptiness of a too-quiet house, where she offers them no soothing words of comfort. Instead, Kanna tells them the story of the first waterbenders.

Voice thrumming with aged worldliness, she weaves them a tale of the spirits; of balance and the strength of their people.

_Tui and La taught the first water tribes of balance; of harmony with our selves and the world around us. We learned of our nature, like water; to shift, to flow with the push and pull of the world_–_a moon to the ocean within us all._

_When we walk the path of existence, the way is often barred by mountains of grief and loss and pain, obstacles that seek to hold us from growing_–_from living_. _We become like water, able to twist and bend and creep through the gaps to overcome those hardships, to move beyond them. _

_Change is inevitable and so we embrace it, learn to dance at its side. Let it shape you, mould you, but _never _let it rule you. This is our greatest strength; it is who we are. _

_It is who_ you_ are._

The understanding that sparks their young eyes as they slowly nod suffuses the elderly woman with warm pride. Though he is still frigidly tense–_brittle_–like ice and she is still fragmented vapour–_scattered_–in the air, Kanna can already see the shift, the inherent nature in them both that works with no conscious direction.

Six winters later, as they rush to the aid of the Avatar, she feels no fear–_no true sadness_–but rather hope; for a new world, for a true peace.

For Sokka is a son of the sea–_formlessly dynamic_–always seeking another angle, another way, and Katara is a daughter of the moon–_lithe and flowing_–ever moving, ever shifting like the water she bends.

Their goodbye is joined and yet separate–_a parallel of days past_; one, brilliant and luminous, the other sullen and quiet but both wear the same quirky grin, the same easy confidence born of hardship and change.

They are of water and though the weight of the world may bend them, it will _never _break them.

* * *

My mind broke trying to figure out how to write these two separately and then Gran-Gran hijacked it all.

In the end, I don't even know...

Hope you still enjoyed it!


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